By Robert Goodier | Space.com

Newly restored photographs of the moon's dark south pole, taken by lunar orbiters in 1967, were released this week in anticipation of NASA's planned Thursday launch of two new probes that will investigate the region in search of underground ice.

Through the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), experts have scanned and digitally refurbished nearly 1,800 photographs of the moon that satellites snapped in 1966 and 1967. This week, the project released new versions of images showing permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole, a prime target for NASA's new lunar scouts set to launch tomorrow.

Dennis Wingo, who directs the project, was 6 years old when the first images were televised. "Even as a small child I was very much a follower of the space program," he told SPACE.com.

The orbiters took photographs and developed the film onboard before scanning them and relaying them to stations around the world. NASA scientists used the images to plan the Apollo moon landings. They were recorded on 2-inch analog tape and stored for posterity. Now, more than 40 years later, Wingo is using the only remaining tape players capable of extracting those images for digitization. He publishes the restorations on the Web site Moonviews.com.

A precursor of the project to restore the tapes began in the 1980s. That attempt stalled when funds dried up. Twenty years later, Wingo noticed a blog post that mentioned the tapes. Nancy Evans, co-founder of the NASA Planetary Data System, had the tape players stored in a barn and was looking for someone to finish the process she had started.

"We're converting them to digital, then processing them on the computer to show them in their original glory," Wingo said. NASA could later compare the 40-year-old images with those the new probes will gather, he added.

Lunar Orbiter IV took this photo of the moon's south pole in May of 1967. It has been digitized and restored through the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. For more images like this one, please visit the project's Web site, Moonviews.com. Credit: LOIRC

This 1967 image of the moon's south pole has been recovered in its original high resolution from old Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware. Prominent features and processing artifacts are identified. For more images like this one, please visit the Web site, Moonviews.com. Credit: LOIRC